


Letting the Days Go By

by beaubete



Series: You May Ask Yourself [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 14:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: As far as lives go, this is one.





	Letting the Days Go By

Copper.  She tastes of copper, always, the faintest tang of blood, of life, of death, long after he’s washed the blood from her fingertips.  Long after the waters of the canals have fled, long after he cracks her ribs and startles her back to breath from the pain. She’s milk and blood, copper and salt, and he drinks in the whorls of her fingerprints, the soft white underside of her breast, the slick dip in the clenched muscle of her inner thigh as he spreads her wide and pretty and precious, cosseted.  She curls her nails into him, digs furrows across his shoulders that sting in the shower when they’re done, wraps herself entwined as though she’ll never let him go. He doesn’t ever want her to let him go, doesn’t plan on ever letting go, himself. 

He drives himself between her thighs as if he can crawl inside her, snarled together as tight as knots.  Like snakes, they tie themselves together gordian, melting, and melting, and melting; on the bow of his yacht, in the lush confection of a hotel room, deep in the sand until there’s grit beneath his nails and he’s been scoured clean.  She wants, almost as obsessively as he does, and they’re a pair, fucking like they’ve just discovered sex, giggling and flushed and fervent, sparks and tinder and rushing blaze unstoppable, uncontrollable. Vesper, his body whispers in the night, and he rolls, covers her with it and she melts around it, lush and wet and accepting.

It comes to him slowly, like sunrise that is at first the darkest purple indigo that gradually folds back to reveal the shell pink dawn and leaves him startled.  Is that already birdsong? Is that already sun? Is this already—he tastes the word like wine, like whisky, like a pan sauce rich and buttered and savory. Love. Yes, love.  Grown bright and vivid, showy against the night of his life before. Yes. Love.

He lets M call, lets her threaten.  Lets her warn and cajole and finally go, cold and angry and resigned.  He isn’t going back to cold, to dreary London, to the empty hollow flats and the empty, hollow life.  Vesper is a house full of sunny rooms, each lit with pale pink light that trails behind her. He trails behind her, happier than he’s ever been to follow, and when she stops in another sunny room in southern France, he is only happier to stop with her.  The warmth soaks into his bones and he knows he will never be cold again.

And then it’s only natural one day when he sweeps her into his arms and murmurs in her ear; he tries dropping to one knee as it’s traditionally done but she’s weeping before he makes it, nodding yes and laughing, rain and rainbow all at once.  He’s proud, so proud, and she’s radiant; he tucks the memory into his mind like a postcard into a book to mark his place. They’ve neither of them family left, so it’s a small affair: little French church, little lace dress, the Father scandalised by the ease they have with each other’s bodies as they seal their pact and amused by their bashful pretense at innocence.  They celebrate in Paris with coffee and wine and sex.

Only once does a cloud skim across their horizon, and he holds her as she weeps, the both of them so bitterly disappointed at the news like icy wind.  Still, they try. They hope. And when it doesn’t happen—when they must accept that it cannot—she holds him as he weeps. Some things aren’t meant to be, no matter how much you want them, and as all clouds do, it passes.  They remember cold and relish warmth all the more.

He touches her toes under the thin white sheet of their bed and laughs with her laughter.  She’s beautiful, lined and graceful; he jokes with her that she’s gotten the uneven side of their contract, him with the salt-gold hair and the slight paunch of muscles gone soft with langor.  

It isn’t fair when she goes; of the two of them, it’s him that holds more sin, him that deserves it more.  She goes all the same, and at the end, after, the smells of loam and cloying lilies still in his skin and hair and clothes, he sits on her side of the bed.  Her pillow still smells of hyacinth. His fingers brush against it and he swears it’s still warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, yeah, I know. This is a pretty pretentious one. It's meant to be read in conjunction with [Once in a Lifetime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121433) and [Same As It Ever Was](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121457), though it's able to stand on its own. The titles for all three and the inspiration for this series of fics come from The Talking Heads' song [Once in a Lifetime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8).


End file.
